“You know it isn’t true?” Catherine said to her again. “You believe me? Please tell me you believe me.”
Lady Wisterberg was both outraged and resigned. “Oh good heavens, my dear, I know it isn’t true. You are a good girl and an innocent and the whole of the ton during the season are jackals.” And yet Lady Wisterberg also sounded so matter-of-fact about it. She’d almost said it with a sort of bitter relish. It was clearly a milieu she understood in a way that Catherine never would. It was as though Catherine’s season had been a game of five-card loo for Lady Wisterberg, and winning or losing had always been equal possibilities. She wondered at all of the things that Lady Wisterberg had seen throughout her life. And why she knew so much about everyone, and how she was able to get invitations for all those events in the first place. “I knew no good could come from associating with that man,” the dowager muttered.
She hadn’t known this at all, but Catherine didn’t argue. That man was the only reason she’d had some semblance of a season at all.
It was also interesting to discover that her new lack of innocence wasn’t at all apparent.
“I’ll see what I can do to dispel that rumor,” Lady Wisterberg continued. “I will contemptuously smash it like a fly if it buzzes up again. It should die down soon enough. But I do think leaving the ton is the wisest and only thing you can do. For your sake and for Lucy’s sake, too, my dear.”
Oh God! Poor Lucy! To have such a tainted friend!
But Lucy had been as perversely thrilled by the scandal as most humans would be, and impressed by the magnitude of ghastliness of it. She was also genuinely hurt and horrified for her. They hadstopped at Lady Wisterberg’s town house so they could say goodbye to each other.
No doubt she was also relieved that Catherine would likely never again turn Mr. Hargrove’s head.
“I will visit you in the country,” Lucy promised. “I’m so sorry about your season!”
“At least we have memories for a lifetime,” Catherine said ironically. They both laughed a little. “I hope when you visit me you will be Mrs. Hargrove.”
They had hugged each other goodbye, as though they’d been through a war together.
None of this had been Lucy’s fault, either. And she was not at all certain whether she would see Lucy again.
“And do you know what else I heard?” Lady Wisterberg said, as the carriage carrying them to the mail coach reached the end of Barking Road. “It’s a rumor, too, mind you. From a maid who is a friend of a maid who is having an affair with a footman at Lady Clayton’s London town house. I learned that Kirkepaid footmento remind me to take you home from every ball before your curfew. At every single event. The cheek of the man!” Her own cheeks went rosy even as she said it.
Catherine’s heart stopped.
“Lord Kirke did what?” she breathed.
“He paid footmen ashillingto remind me to take you home by curfew. At every ball. A shilling! To come and fetch me from the game room. And they did! Do you know how much a shilling means to a footman? As if I wouldn’t remember my responsibility to you,” she huffed.
But Catherine recalled how logy and resentful Lady Wisterberg had been in the carriage as she’d dutifully escorted her home. As if she’d been pulledfrom a trance. She began to imagine the scene that might have been caused by a footman attempting to get her up from a game in which she was deeply immersed and had no intention of leaving.
Her throat felt tight. She somehow hadn’t even considered that Lady Wisterberg might simply forget about her. But of course that made sense. After all, Lucy, who was staying with Lady Wisterberg, had no curfew. All of the other adults in Catherine’s life had always been responsible. Not a gambler or imbiber in the lot.
Dominic must have known how nearly drugged Lady Wisterberg was by gambling. After all, he knew the ton as well as Lady Wisterberg did.
He had looked after her from the first. From the very night he’d been hit in the face. He had seen to her safety. To the time he’d gone, against his will, to find her at the Hackworths’ because she’d done a stubbornly reckless thing to get him to prove that he cared.
And he never would have told her about the footmen. She might never have known.
He’d done it because that was who he was. Her chest ached.
“Perhaps we’ll never know who was responsible for the dress,” Lady Wisterberg said. “But if you ask me, that man has taken an inordinate interest in you and you are safer in the country.”
But Catherine was stunned.
You didn’t see your face when you saw Mrs. Pariseau’s new dress.But I did.
Of a certainty, he was a man who understood longing. And the suffering implicit in it.
Kirke had wanted her to have a beautiful dress, and he could hardly overtly buy one for her. So he’d done that, too.
Because he couldn’t help himself. He’d wanted to ease her suffering.
She covered her eyes with her hands. They had begun to sting again.
He thought of his work as moving the world toward justice. But she saw now that what he really was doing was trying to move the world more toward love. Love seemed a fundamental part of him, however fiercely, indirectly expressed. Even as it had devastated his life years ago.